The international law of occupation enters the picture signifying both the need to distinguish between order and chaos and the need to distinguish between orders: between the rule and the exception. In distinguishing between order and chaos, the function of international law is to manage the situation; to eliminate chaos through control of the exceptional situation. In distinguishing between orders, its function is to create an orderly space which is defined by its exceptionality-by its suspension of the rule. We argue that the legality of the phenomenon of occupation, as it relates to the function of managing the situation, is to be measured in relation to three fundamental legal principles: (a) Sovereignty and title in an occupied territory are not vested in the occupying power. The roots of this principle emanate from the principle of the inalienability of sovereignty through actual or threatened use of force. Under contemporary international law, and in view of the principle of self-yytermination, sovereignty is vested in the population under occupation.
(b) The occupying power is entrusted with the management of public order and civil life in the territory under control. In view of the principle of self-determination, the people under occupation are the beneficiaries of this trst. The dispossession and subjugation of these people violate this trust. (c) Occupation is temporary. 19 It may be neither permanent nor indefinite. These principles, as we will show, interrelate: the substantive constraints on the managerial discretion of the occupant elucidated in principles "(a)" and "(b)" generate the conclusion in "(c)" that occupation must necessarily be temporary. Violating the temporal constraints expressed in principle "(c)" cannot but violate principles "(a)" and "(b)," thereby corrupting the normative regime of occupation in the sense that an occupation that cannot be regarded as temporary defies both the principle of trust and of self-determination. The violation of any one of these principles, therefore, unlike the violation of a specific norm that reflects them,20 renders an occupation illegal per se. This is the nature of the Israeli occupation.
of the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT). Section II.A: Intrinsic Dimensions of the Israeli Occupation of the OPT, substantiates this argument. We further argue that the legality of occupation, in its function to create an orderly space that is nevertheless distinct from the normal political order of sovereign equality between states, is to be measured by its exceptionality: once the boundaries between the normal order (i.e., sovereign equality between states) and the exception (i.e., occupation) are blurred, an occupation becomes illegal. The nexus between the two functions is clear: an occupation that is illegal from the perspective of managing an otherwise chaotic situation is also illegal in that it obfuscates the distinction between the rule and its exception. Yet, the distinction between these two forms of illegality is important; the former is grounded in the intrinsic principles of the law of occupation, while the latter is extrinsic to this law and delineates its limits. The Israeli occupation of the OPT is illegal both intrinsically and extrinsically. Section II.B: Extrinsic Dimensions of the Israeli Occupation of the OPT, substantiates this argument.